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Cool! I recently wrote my own user script to do the same thing. It's going to be very hard to patch or detect this, as updating video element props don't trigge
by extheat 3y ago
Cool! I recently wrote my own user script to do the same thing. It's going to be very hard to patch or detect this, as updating video element props don't trigger DOM updates. They would have to either do lots of JS prototype trickery or check for playback rate when doing adblock detection. One thing to keep in mind here though since you're doing DOM lookups every time anything on the page changes, is that there could be some small overhead in page render time, and also that using fixed CSS classes means any small change to page code could break the checks. In case it's a problem in the future, checking .innerText is a hacky way to workaround it.
- rjh29 3y agoThey could refuse to deliver the main video content until the minimum ad time has passed?
- fennecfoxy 3y agoWell really they could include a hash with each frame of video data, timestamp when clients have started watching and only allow sending the next x frames once y time has passed. Really, they should just get rid of all ads and force everyone to pay a subscription, because apparently that's what everyone wants. Oh no, wait, they want neither; people want Youtube for free without ads. Sure, YT could make less profit and therefore serve fewer ads/lower premium price, but in order to convince them to do that, humans would actually have to work together and boycott it to send a message, and as we all know that ain't ever gonna happen.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoThis has already happend to me, probably unintentionally. Something in Cromite "broke" the ads and just showed a black screen before the video started. It was fine. I had no problem with it.
- kurthr 3y agoI had something similar happen. I'm fine with a blank screen and waiting 5-30sec. I don't want intrusive ads before during and after a 5 min video on water heater maintenance.
- 9991 3y agoWatching a blank screen is still a huge quality of life win.
- throw101010 3y agoExactly what happens on Twitch (that or a low quality version of the stream) if you use the few anti-ads that still work. And I don't mind that, if I do, I usually stop watching and move to something else... especially because their ads are even more annoying than YouTube, often multiple consecutive 30 seconds ads, unskippable. I do not know who watches these, especially when they cut something happening live.
- dandrew5 3y agoYou might be interested in https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions. A combination of its vaft uBlock script and using a VPN connected to somewhere in Austria has kept me pretty much ad-free for years.
- Dwedit 3y agoI'd say the low quality version of the stream is far better than the purple screen.
- deanc 3y agoI'm using uBlock Origin and haven't seen an ad on twitch other than for a day or two about a year ago, in years. (Daily Twitch watcher)
- throw101010 3y agoYou might be in a country/region in which advertisers don't buy ads. But for quite some time now uBlock Origin isn't enough to block ads. Also if you are subbed/Twitch Prime to a streamer or have Twitch Turbo it might spare you a lot of ads too.
- crtasm 3y ago
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoArms race towards people running their own private YouTube instances which pre-fetch subscriptions and recommendations to skip ads. If the video hasn't been downloaded already it pretends to play the ad in the background while waiting. A minor inconvenience, but hardly the end of the world.
- dylan604 3y agoBe even easier if they provided an MRSS feed! I wonder if a popular channel on YT started making their content available in an easy to parse format like MRSS if they'd notice a significant loss in YT viewers in favor of it. Of course, they'd then lose the ad share, so probably not a thing that will happen. How fast would YT issue a C&D if someone created an app that did this for you so that you just entered in the channels you follow, and then it would just check every so often for new content?
- Zetaphor 3y agoYou're describing Freetube. I use YouTube daily without an account, ads, or algorithms.
- t0bia_s 3y agohttps://freetube.io https://freetube.io Happy user here as well.
- raffraffraff 3y agoHow reliable is it? I used one of these apps from the F-Droid store (can't remember if it was this or NewPipe) but reliability was poor.
- t0bia_s 3y agoIt's desktop aplication. How unrealible NewPipe was for you?
- treyd 3y agoMaking this work would likely mean that the CDN edge servers become much more stateful and the costs of operating that might outweigh the additional revenue.
- kevincox 3y agoNot really. IIRC they already used signed URLs. They just need to add a not-before field to the URL.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoI'm OK with this. Better than ads.
- apgwoz 3y agoThis. For some corporate training sites they do this, which makes watching at 2x useless since you just have wait silently… but if you’re me, you get distracted, go do something else and then come back a month later when the nag email tells you you need to do the training.
- cwsx 3y agoI don't think I've ever completed a training course on time, only after getting "urgent: 7 days to complete". I've got severe ADHD so these types of assessments are near impossible due to the slow dialogue and forced wait time. Though most of these courses give you multiple (or unlimited) attempts, so I'll screenshot each slide + wrong answers and brute force until I'm done. At least I can get other stuff done in the meantime.
- klipklop 3y agoWhat I do instead is attempt to reverse engineer what JavaScript function I need to call or web request is needed to make it think I competed the test/videos. A common easy way is to just re-enable the “next” button. Even if it takes me longer than just doing legitimately, I find it more educational.
- eru 3y agoThat's probably a bad idea from a legal point of view.
- zelphirkalt 3y agoThe approach of trying to know what exactly the user does in their browser on their own computer and from that information to conclude whether something in front of the computer happened (the learning) is nonsensical at best and crime at worst (when done without consent or secretly). Allow the user to give deliberate signals by marking parts as done and if necessary analyze the datetimes of those signals.
- ww520 3y agoThe next will be downloading the videos in background, stripping the ads, and watching them later.
- mitthrowaway2 3y agoI've seen a few ads on Youtube that I actually appreciated watching. Quiet background music, a useful product, respectful presentation, text with no spoken words, and done quickly. However, the vast majority are the exact opposite. Loud music, shouting, uncomfortable sound effects, a long playtime, and to top it off, either advertising an outright scam or else a product that I have no interest in whatsoever. Sometimes I have to rip my headphones off to protect my ears. Not to mention the timing -- ads between movements in a classical symphony, or else right during a passage itself. It's a good reminder that while I've enjoyed Youtube for many years, I also have a CD collection I can listen to instead.
- TheKarateKid 3y agoThe worst was when Google was turning a blind eye to advertisers putting entire TV episodes and music videos in ads. It was infuriating to have something playing in the other room only to realize what should've been a 2 minute ad break somehow has been going on for 10 minutes.
- zamadatix 3y agoOne can simply "videoElement.addEventListener('ratechange', callback);" to be notified the ad was sped up. I mean the client can then undo this, as it can any JS the page offers, but there's nothing harder about detecting playbackRate changes vs something which causes a DOM update.
- zeven7 3y agoThey could just patch Chrome to make "updating video element props trigger DOM updates".
- recov 3y agoGood thing alternative engines exist
- zeven7 3y agoTrue, but they also have a lot of sway over what other engines do
- dirtyhippiefree 3y agoYandex…For the Win…
- lionkor 3y agoAnd you could build chromium and remove just that